Jan. 17, 2014

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Current owners Fred and Ethel Adams purchased the site in 2012 and have restored a pond area, a 3,000-square-foot barn and others areas of the property.

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Bottlegate Farm in Kent isn’t officially a “historic” site in the sense that someone of the caliber of George Washington or even Gen. Israel Putnam visited this property at 919 Route 52, slept here or called it home in the distant past.

But, nevertheless, the place dates back to the 1700s and there is much local lore — albeit some legendary and inexact — connected to it.

“This property, formally known as the Winter Garden Farm, represents an important historic site within the town of Kent,” proclaims the Kent Historical Society in a January 2013 report.

The farm was leased by tenant farmer Nathan Crosby, the uncle of Enoch Crosby, a spy during the Revolutionary period, from the Philipse family, according to the historical society.

At the entrance today is its characteristic feature and part of the property’s charm. Four large white milk-bottle-style columns flank the long driveway and give it its name.

These oversized vessels, two 8-feet tall and two 4-feet tall, signal it was once a dairy farm when vaudeville actors Ole Olsen and Stanley “Chic” Johnson, who formed the comedy team known as Olsen & Johnson, lived there. Their act included Olsen playing ragtime tunes on a piano and a popular slapstick comedy routine called Hellz-A-Poppin.

Johnson purchased the farm and in the 1940s spent lots of time and money to renovate the house, barn and cottage, as well as building another large barn equipping it with then state-of-the-art milking equipment. He also bought the Borden’s 1939 World’s Fair prize-winning Holsteins.

“He loved the area so much,” the Kent Historical Society said of Johnson, that he eventually purchased adjoining properties, began raising chickens and converted the guest house to a theater.

Johnson also built those landmark milk bottles and opened a restaurant to entertain celebrities and GIs, which brought lifestyle attention to Putnam County, including a 1942 article by Life Magazine.

The farm is “a part of Putnam history and actually root cellars are still there,” said John Ravetto, a real estate agent with Houlihan Lawrence in Brewster who has the listing. “I have driven by it for years and am excited about getting it to sell.”

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Ravetto said it was his understanding that vaudeville stars established the farm as a business in part to offer a respite and employment to war veterans.

And later on it became a popular restaurant, Winter Garden Farm, serving fruits from the orchards and vegetables picked from the gardens and their own farm chickens, as the menu reads. The menu also includes a blended fruit juice cocktail, Winter Garden stuffed leghorn eggs, chicken-rich consommé princess soup and entrees including half of a broiled chicken with corn fritters for $3.50, broiled lamb chops for $4 or filet mignon for $5.50.

At some point in the 1950s it was temporarily known as Bolla’s restaurant after a chef from the Waldorf Astoria who moved to Putnam County.

The property shrunk to its current 8.6-acre size when the New York City Department of Environmental Protection purchased a majority of the land to the west to better preserve the city’s watershed. The property, Ravetto added, also was damaged in a fire more than 30 years ago.

Current owners Fred and Ethel Adams purchased the site in 2012 and have restored a pond area, a 3,000-square-foot barn and others areas of the property.

It remains a commercial-industrial site and is now being offered for sale at $895,000. The listing says there is an option to lease the property. Annual property taxes are $18,212. MLS Number: 3301949

Zoning allows for commercial use and there is 2-bedroom home and a 2,500-square-foot foundation without a structure.